Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1887-11-10
WHAT INVENTOR EDISON SAYS.
The Next Important Invention - Cheap
Motive Power-Labor Question

The Next Important Invention IL Cheap
Motive Powe-Labor Question
asked Edison What is 10 be the ten
deney of invention during the next quar-
ter Of century,
The next invention, think. he said.
rs likely TO lie the turning Of coal into
motive power without the mediation OF
steam am nov at work on machine
called the pyro-magnetic dynamo for this
purpose-to get electricity directly from
coal. Almost all of our available energy
Is IN wood and coal We get it out at a
terrible waste. As four-tift of the heat
IN fire place goes uP the chimney and
only one-iifth out into the room where 1t
Is wanted. 50 about three-fourths Of the
energy in coal is lost in getting at the
other fourth. Coal can be turned i'm
mediately into electricity-I have demon
strate,l that-and | viii know in short
time whether it can be done CONNER
cially-that is, without costing more than
it comes TO. If my idea can be realized,
a steamer that now burns 100 tons OF
coal a dav will burn twenty-five tons IN
stead. Very certain | am that the whole
tendency of invention for the last thirteen
years of this century will be directed to-
ward economy of motive power.
"What do you think of the keely
MOTOR
Il have never seen it. so | have no
opinion about it But all the results he
is said to have obtained can he got from
compressed air. All the air in this room
can be condensed into a liquid that could
he carried in a iilbert shell, and its explo-
sive force would be tremendous. Skill
fully released and reconstructed it would
move great machine.
When motive power gets to he four
times as cheap as it is, Mr.. Ellison. what
will become Of the lahoring MANI
He will he enriched by it. Machln-
cry will be his slave. See how machin-
cry has multiplied in the last fifty years.
As a direct result. workingmen get
double the wages they did then and the
necessities of life cost only half as much.
In other words, hand worker can to-
day buy four times as much with ten
hours of work as his father could fifty
wears ago For the first time in the
worlds history skilled mechanic can
buy barrel of flour with a single days
WIN Iiit III tAlS Sihtth
States represents the labor of 1000. 000,
900 men-or fifty times as much labor
as that of all the men in the country.
When motive power is still further
cheapened-say in another generation
l believe that the unskilled laborer, if
sober and industrious, can have a house
of his own, and horse and carriage,
and library and a piano. 1t is terrible
stupidity that leads some laboring men
to suppose that machinery is their foe.
1t is the thing that gives them independ-
ence and even freedom. Without ma
chinery society would drift into the con-
dition of master and slave; the nultipli
cation of machinery means for every
worker more food, better clothes. better
house, less work. In fact, l believe that
the indefinite increase of machinery is
going to solve what folks call the labor
question that is. the desire of hand
workers to get bigger slice of the mar
gin of profit. w. A. Croffut in New
York Mail and Express.